Hey! How are you? i am fine. just want to comment on the enormous, informative site you have. it is truly a remarkable fish
site! first things first, i'm from sydney, australia, so all of my units of measurements are slightly different from yours, and i'm not quite sure about the litre to gallon
conversion rate.

i've just got a few questions on oscars. i've got 4 oscars, between 14-17cm long. 2 tiger reds around 14-15cm, 2 red albinos around 16-17, a 9 inch plecostumus, two 2 inch clown
loaches, and a 3 inch wide angelfish. they seem to get along very well in a 176 Litre bare (no gravel, or ornaments) aquarium i'm actually surprised that my oscars do not attack
the loaches at all! i feed them with medium-sized hikari colour enhancement pellets twice to three a day, and they are awesome, they just jump out of the water as soon as i enter
the room.

i was just wondering, will the tank be too small for them? because i'm planning to grow them till they are adult and then i am looking forward to mating them. and i'm pretty sure
out of my 2 black tigers, one is a male and the other is a female, becos one of them is chunkier(fatter, more built) than the other (which has a slender form and a slightly more
protruding mouth part), and between the 2 albino reds, one is male and the other is a female, becos one of them is also more chunkier and more built than the other.

will i need to separate them to different tanks if they want to mate and start laying eggs? and also when will they start to mate and lay eggs? around what size? how old? will
the pleco or angel get in the way? what would i need to encourage them to mate? today night, i noticed that both the 2 black tigers Oscars were acting slightly differently. they
were both vibrating up and down, really fast. their heads and tails, and generally the whole body of the fish was vibrating and shaking up and down towards each other. they would
swim side by side, and as soon as one vibrates, the other would acknowledge it and vibrate back.

is it a form of communication? the mouth and gill parts are also outstretched and were stretched out very big, bigger than normal. the fins too were very outstretched. bonding
was often and some pushing and shoving with the mouth. the male's mouth is always open and gills outstretched. a bit of attacking too by the female towards the male's body. is
this a sign of mating? should i remove the 2 albinos, pleco, Angelfish and 2 clown loaches and leave the 2 black tigers alone by themselves to mate?

shoudl i place a flat piece of rock in? if i separate the albinos and the tigers, later if i want to put them back in the same tank, will the fight? cos right now they don't
fight a single bit. so i'm afraid that they will forget each other and start fighting. can albino and black mate together? if so, what would the offspring look like? how would i
care for the offspring of my 2 black tigers if they DO mate and lay eggs, and the eggs hatch into fry? how big are the fry? sorry i've got sooo many questions, i just don't know
what to do and how to handle this situation.

i'm so excited and i would like you to be part of that excitement and help me answer as many questions as possible , so as to inform and acknowlege me on oscars. one more
question - can oscars go well with a red salmon? (relatively the same size)

Reply. Hello Wes. I think my answer is going to disappoint you. Let me apologize for that, before I start.I have never
spawned Oscars, and I am very reluctant to write about things that I haven't done. Your comments remind me of the the discussions that my brother and I had a long time ago, and your
enthusiasm reminds me of the enthusiasm we had.

More than thirty years ago my brother and I were trying to get started breeding fish, and we had a lot of difficulties. We read a lot and listened to a lot of people talk about
breeding fish. We got a lot of inaccurate information and advice from people who talked a lot about spawning fish that they had never spawned.

Eventually, we found a few people, who were breeding fish. We stopped trying to breed the fish we had, and started copying the breeding techniques of the people, who we could
see were actually breeding fish. It worked, and we we got started breeding fish. Eventually we bred many many species and raised rather large numbers of fish. In our minds we succeeded in
breeding fish.

For example, early on we spawned Convict Cichlids, and really learned a lot about spawning them and about how to raise the babies. Click
here
to read about breeding Convict Cichlids.

I met a man who regularly spawned Oscars and sold young Oscars to fish retailers and wholesalers. Click
here to read about that. At
that time I did not feel that it would be fair to copy his techniques for breeding Oscars and compete with him. It would have been legal to do it, but it didn't seem fair. I discussed it with my
father. He agreed with me and encouraged me to breed some similar fish.

I did, and I never came back to trying to breed Oscars. But I know that it takes a very big aquarium with at least 150-gallons of water to house a mature breeding pair of
Oscars.

It
sounds like your Oscars
may be getting ready to
spawn, but it is very
difficult to tell, since I haven't even seen your fish, and again I haven't spawned Oscars either.

If your Oscars do spawn, please write us a report, or if someone else has spawned Oscars and wants to answer your question, then I'll post their comments here. Good luck with
your fish.

Incidentally I went to Google and searched for "Breeding Oscars" and got a huge number of links. Click
here
to see the results of my search. so it looks like there is lots of information available.

Hello....I am a new comer to your web site and would like to compliment you on your content. I am currently raising three
Albino Tiger Oscars, among many other fish.

All three of my fish are 12 inches or slightly more. Two are female and the other is a very large aggressive male who runs the show in my 120-gallon. I keep one female in a
separate tank after I tried to introduce her to my mated pair and found that these fish will truly fight to the death.

Anyway, I just wanted to drop a tip to anyone planning to try and breed this beautiful species. Treat your fish as if they were in their own habitat, and keep their lives as
stress free as possible. Also, keeping the tanks temperature between 80 and 82 degrees will trigger the fish to begin their nesting.

Thank you for your time and keep up the good work!!!!!!
Jeff

Reply.Hello Jeff. Thank you for your complimentary comments about this web site and for your interesting comments about your Oscars.

I just wanted to tell you about my pet Tiger Oscar Jeffrey. He lives in a 55 gallon aquarium with a 5 1/2 inch
Pacu, two 5 inch plecos, a 5 inch African knifefish, a 6 inch Needle-nose gar, a 2 inch Jack Dempsey, a 4 inch Shark Catfish, a 5 inch Pictus, and a 3 inch Synodontis catfish.

Jeffrey is about 5 inches long, and I am aware he will reach 15 inches in length (by then I will have a bigger aquarium). I feed him small cichlid pellets, shrimp pellets,
tubix worms, and feeder goldfish. He and the Pacu are best friends. They slowly chase each other but never hurt each other.

-C.J.

Reply.Hello C.J. and thank you for sending us your interesting comments about Jeffrey and his tank mates.

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here to go on to another page in this web site with more Customer Comments and our Replies about Oscars.